HER2-positive Breast Cancer Patients Live Longer if Drugs Given Prior Surgery Eradicate Tumor

Women with early HER2-positive breast cancer after administering lapatinib and trastuzumab drug before surgery showed no signs of residual disease and survived longer without the cancer returning, reports a new study. This is known as pathological complete response, pCR. This was likely to happen in patients who got the two anti-cancer drugs together than single agents. The findings of the study are presented at the European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-12). The principal investigator presented results of nearly the ten years of follow-up from the international NeoALTTO BIG-06 trial. Patients were randomized to receive either trastuzumab or lapatinib alone or in combination.

He said: "Patients who obtained a pCR had significantly better long-term survival than those who did not achieve pCR. Although overall survival rates did not vary much between the three treatment groups, nearly twice as many patients obtained pCR if they received both drugs, 51 percent compared to 27.1 percent of patients receiving only one drug in the other two arms of the study combined."

HER2-positive cancer is an aggressive form of cancer, and approximately 1 in 5 breast cancers are HER2-positive. But, with the development of trastuzumab and other drugs that hinder HER2 signaling like lapatinib, the prognosis for this disease has greatly improved.

In this study, when the researchers compared women who had obtained pCR with those that had not in all 3 treatment groups, the study found that event-free survival and overall survival were much better in women who had pCR; 77 percent of pCR patients survived nine years event-free compared to 61 percent of non-pCR patients, and 88 percent of pCR patients were still alive at nine years compared to 72 percent of non-pCR patients. Subgroup analysis revealed that these associations were statistically significant in women who obtained the drug combination or who were hormone receptor-negative.

The author stated: "Although we might have expected higher overall survival in the group of volunteers receiving the combination of both drugs where pCR rates were higher, this was not the case. This was likely due to the fact that the study was not powered to identify small differences in survival between the three groups.

The study concludes that patients who achieve pCR are significantly more likely to survive for longer compared to those who do not obtain pCR.

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Source-Medindia